On Cyborgs and Gene Editing: Lessons from Orphan Black

The latest season of Orphan Black takes a cue from Donna Haraway&rsquo;s “A Cyborg Manifesto&rdquo; to probe the boundaries of identity, humanity, and perfection, as it reminds us that mainstream genetic and reproductive technologies are closer to the show&rsquo;s more radical technologies than we might think.

In “A Cyborg Manifesto,&rdquo; originally published in 1985, Donna Haraway describes a cyborg as “a cybernetic organism, a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creature of fiction.&rdquo;

The clones of the BBC America television show Orphan Black seem to fit that definition well &ndash; they all possess snippets of synthetic DNA entwined in their genome, and often exist in an at least partially fictitious reality designed to better control their actions. However, the latest season explores the possibilities and meanings of cyborg-ness in greater depth. Fittingly, each episode is named with a quote from Haraway&rsquo;s work: “The Collapse of Nature,&rdquo; “Transgressive Border Crossing,&rdquo; “The Stigmata of Progress,&rdquo; “From Instinct to Rational Control,&rdquo; “Human Raw Material,&rdquo; and “The Scandal of Altruism.&rdquo; And as Orphan Black engages with what it means to be a cyborg, this fourth season also situates itself in the ongoing conversation on new human genetic and reproductive technologies in the real world, including genome editing.

[SPOILER ALERT]

Neolution is the name of the show&rsquo;s pro-eugenic movement, whose goal is to take control of human evolution. In the first episode of the season, a character reads from the book on Neolution: “The individual can only begin the journey to the extraordinary by casting off the genetically mandated human shell.&rdquo; Sarah retorts that Cosima calls this stuff “sound bite science.&rdquo;

The season reveals one of Neolution&rsquo;s experimental genetic technologies: a synthetic worm-like organism implanted into people&rsquo;s cheeks to act as an ongoing gene therapy delivery system.

The views, opinions and positions expressed by these authors and blogs are theirs and do not necessarily represent that of the Bioethics Research Library and Kennedy Institute of Ethics or Georgetown University.